Product Design: Creativity, Concepts And Usability

This book presents a well-organized structure for learning the process of designing a product. Creativity and Concepts are the two major elements of product design emphasized in the book. Usability is also stressed as an important aspect of product design because it is advantageous to know the requirements of the users and their expectations.

The book extensively describes the concept of problem formulation through user centred design (UCD) survey, need statements and major requirements, and specifications and constraints. It also addresses the concept of idea generation of a formulated problem with the help of an idea-rack and optimization through configuration exploration. The text explains several other concepts of product design, such as product life cycle, design phases, simplicity, richness and complexity, uncoupled and decoupled designs, risk management, synthesis and analysis, interdisciplinary approach, and flexibility.

The book is eminently suitable for the students of mechanical engineering, besides being useful to students of all engineering disciplines. Academics will find this text useful for the introduction of an interdisciplinary course on product design either at the senior undergraduate degree level or at the postgraduate level.